Regarding Yelling

I’ve become very spoiled lately, living alone and leading such a quiet life, despite having a very vocal kitteh. The more time passes, the more I find I can’t tolerate any loudness. Perhaps it has something to do with the tinnitus (as discussed); or perhaps it’s just that I’m in the habit of indulging my own preferences only… and they run to the white noise varieties. During my childhood, my parents argued frequently and were in the habit of yelling at each other to the point where it seemed that violence was imminent (though it rarely ever came to that), and this was often scary for a little kid, though one does get used to things. However, one also gets used to the absence of such.

Nothing gets me in a bad mood faster than sustained bursts of noise. I find I’m unable to focus on anything else. Raised, angry voices literally make me cringe in fear, even if they have nothing to do with me. Saturday afternoon a group of young men appeared to be having an argument in the parking lot of my apartment complex, and I was scared to go out to my car. It was silly, but I began to worry they’d start physically fighting, even though there was no sign of this. I thought it could happen. They were nowhere near my car, but even so, I stayed inside for a while until they quieted down, and I was slightly late for my meeting ~ because I was afraid of nothing really.

Ironically, my meeting was in a public place, and it was loud there too, which eventually put me in a grumpy mood for a while until the crowd thinned out and the noise volume lowered. Geez, I’m such a crabby old lady now. Guess what? IDGAF about that. I like what I like… and more importantly, I dislike what I dislike.

~*~

The Daily Prompt: Cringe

Stuck in the Meddle with You

I don’t like to meddle, or even give advice really. I don’t know anything! But most people lurve to give advice… omg how they will tell you what you should do if you give them half a chance. Even if you don’t ask, they’ll tell you. Even if you obviously have it way more together than they do, they won’t hesitate to explain how you could do better. That’s just the way people are, or at least the ones I’ve encountered. I guess that’s a topic for another poast ~ the kinds of people who gravitate toward me. Yes.

But we’re here today to discuss meddling, since that’s the WOTD.

I’ve tried so hard to stay out of other people’s stuffs and yet… and yet… I know so much about other people’s stuffs. How did this happen? Why do people confide in me so often? It’s one of the biggest ironies of my life. Probably because I don’t meddle or even judge really. Why would I judge anyone, since I’ve made so many mistakes? I just sit there and listen, wondering why I’m so trusted, which is probably why. Weird!

It’s hard not to feel like you’ve meddled, even when you’ve only listened and agreed with what the person wanted to do all along. My standard “advice” is just hey don’t do what I’ve done, which is silly really since I’m not that bad off, I suppose. Sort of. Depending on your definitions. Whatever!

~*~

The Daily Prompt: Meddle

Jabberwocky

One of my father’s faves… he would have liked this.

Happy Dad’s Day!

No Off Switch

I create best in silence and it’s easy enough to turn off the sound on all my devices. OK, maybe not the meowful one, but at least he goes into snooze mode frequently. ^..^ When I’m feeling especially creative, sometimes I even drive without music on. Weird, I know! But I absorb so much inspiration from my surroundings that even a bit more data can overwhelm me and paradoxically cause a creativity halt. I’m constantly bombarded with new ideas, almost all of which will turn out to be meh-sauce, but still… ya never know until you explore one a little.

 

The one noise I can’t turn off though is the ringing in my head. Twenty/four/seven my left ear vibrates with tinnitus and there’s nothing I can do about it. Incurable. Occasionally both ears are affected. I’m used to this, since it’s been going on for years, but the sound does interfere with writing now. Some days I simply can’t do much creative writing at all and have to be content with reading and/or watching movies. Not that this is so terrible. Love reading! Love movies!

If I get super excited by a new writing idea and think it’s the best thing ever, which hasn’t occurred in quite a while, the tinnitus volume appears to automagically dip by itself and I can focus 100%. Part of the problem may be that I remember getting excited by writing ideas in the past, and they mostly turned out to be nothing, so it’s difficult to summon up that kind of enthusiasm again.

~*~

The Daily Post: Volume

On Being Wrong

I recently experienced a revelation: the relief of being wrong.

How so, you ask?

Sometimes it’s a burden to continually reestablish a position I’ve staked out. I like to believe I’m a unique snowflake (no, not *that* kind of snowflake) and come up with my very own unique ideas. Naturally I will have supporting arguments, however oddball. Since I present my case logically, I will get supporters; or perhaps peeps were already inclined to agree. In any case, as time passes, doubt creeps in… what if the majority had it right all along? Oh drat. Boring!

At that point, holding on to my position becomes stressful, since it becomes a game of cognitive dissonance. I’m telling myself I’m right because I’ve invested in the idea; yet my current data is coming in opposite to that, which I must ignore. Suddenly, boom! I decide not to ignore the new data and abandon the position instead.

What follows? Relief! A feeling of peacefulness.

Nope, it doesn’t matter what the idea was, though you are free to guess. You’ll probably be wrong however. 🙂

(This in no way concedes that all my weird ideas are wrong, just one. Or possibly two.)

~*~

The Daily Prompt: Revelation

Housekeeping Notes

A friend said that he had put new blog entries up recently, but I hadn’t seen them in my WordPress feed. I went back to look and this list happened.

1. I found new blog poasts by other favorite bloggers that I had missed even though I go through my feed daily. Apparently what happens is that poasts are not always appearing as they are timestamped. You can’t assume that just because you read your feed new entries won’t pop in earlier in the line later. This is really annoying!
2. But what you can do instead of reading your feed the usual way is click to the “manage” tab and sort your bloggers alphabetically. Then under each one it will say the last time they updated, which will give you a clue whether you read that entry or not (unless a blogger updates multiple times daily, eek). If there is no update statement, it’s fair to assume that someone hasn’t blogged in a while and you’re OK. This is sort of like the days of olde when we had the whozit list on the side.
3. Of course you might not care enough to do that, in which case ignore item 2 above.
4. If you are considering the switch to the “Managed Tab Feed Read” (MTFR), another positive benefit is that your feed won’t be cluttered with pictures and suggestions, so you get a nice, neat list of blogs instead of a huge pile of crapadoo.
5. Blogs that are still on Blogger have a different kind of feed source and back in the day I C&P’d that into my WP reader. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. I don’t know why! Apparently the friend whose poasts I was looking for (remember him? this is a song about him) was one of those bloggers and his poasts were not feeding right. That’s the best I can do for a hi-tech explanation here. (Need lizard halps.) Anyway, none of that matters now because WP has learned that most of us are idiots and has figured out how to grab the feed code itself. So, I searched for friend’s blog in the WP feed searchy bar; WP found it and added it, viola. I didn’t have to go poking around for XML or whatever the eff.
6. I caught up with friend’s poasts and all is good.
7. MY DAUGHTER IS GETTING MARRIED IN TWO MONTHS OMG OMG OMG.
8. I highly recommend using the MTFR instead of the normal WP feed so as not to miss any bloggity goodness, especially if you have a lot of blogs in your feed (I have 279 at the mo). I needed to add this item because (a) I like to have 8 things, and (b) I had already defined MTFR and once you do that you have to use it.

That’s all.

Happy Birthday Mommy

The Opposite of Bird

What’s the opposite of bird, she says. What color is five?

She radiates light and energy, and her questions loop about my head like an undulating jump-rope. I revel in her discoveries; she numbs my pain with a fistful of coffee-paper butterflies.

~*~

The Daily Prompt: Radiate

Seattle 2012

I survived my fear of heights to visit the Space Needle with my daughter in 2012. That was pretty awesome.

But the best part of the day was our visit to Chihuly’s glass garden nearby. I had never seen his work in person before. Incredible.

~*~

The Daily Prompt: Survive

Syzygy

It might be a thousand years
Before the stars
Line up again like this;
One last incandescent kiss
As the light diminishes
And five million miles of dark
Ribbon out
In a long slow
Deathless march.

Eons pass;
A glacier cracks;
Again the moon
Hangs low and blue.
Did she count the waves
While I waited for you?
The tide pulls us into alignment:
Two frozen souls
Circling
Space and time.

I’ve lain with a hundred men
And felt nothing;
Yet your gaze burns my skin
From across an ocean.
Tectonic plates shake
When we touch
At last—
Mountains collapse;
The earth splits in half.

We retreat,
Our cosmology incomplete;
Resigned to the separation,
The endless analysis and division,
The rebalance and reposition,
Until equilibrium settles over the seas.
We drift once again
To opposite ends
Of this lonely galaxy.

~*~

The Daily Prompt: Incomplete